Fear is Good

Author: Tommy Leung | 01.17.2010 | Category: Life

Fear is bad. That’s what we believe. Fear isn’t a pleasant feeling. We’d much rather be happy or excited than scared. Our body doesn’t respond positively to fear: heart races, palms sweaty, hair stands on end, and thoughts go a mile a minute. This is not relaxing.

No one will blame us for avoiding fear. It’s bad. It’s sound advice to avoid bad.

But, fear tells us something. The more we fear something, the more we know we need to do it.

We don’t fear the things we know. Why would we? If we know we’ll perform fine, what is there to be afraid of? We can handle it. We only fear what we don’t know. We don’t know we’ll perform well. We don’t know we can handle it.

The catch-22 is that we’ll never know we can if we are always in fear. We fear, we avoid: nothing changes.

Right now, fear is telling you this is ridiculous. Fear wants you to think there is danger. Don’t listen. There is always danger. Going from crawling to walking was dangerous. Much safer on four limbs than two.

Fear is how we know what we need to do. What we know is safe. We might hate it. It might not be for us. But, we are familiar with it. There’s no surprises. It’s safer to complain about it than change it.

Fear makes the unknown look dangerous and the known look safe.

Once upon a time, the known was unknown. They are both dangerous. It’s a frame of mind. Change your frame of mind. Change your world.

Fear is good.

By Tommy Leung